


The Knife of Never Letting Go

by heavenlyshadows



Series: Let Me Go [2]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man (Tom Holland Movies)
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Happy Hogan is a Good Bro, Healing, Moving On, Tony Stark Acting as Peter Parker's Parental Figure, Tony Stark Has A Heart, Tony Stark Needs a Hug
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-01
Updated: 2020-05-01
Packaged: 2021-03-01 21:28:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,088
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23943925
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/heavenlyshadows/pseuds/heavenlyshadows
Summary: Tony rubbed his hands up and down his legs, trying to stop the tremble spreading through his body. “It’s just- god it’s so hard. Everywhere I go, I see his face. I just really miss him.”Happy’s lips pinched into a tight line. “Yeah, I miss him too.orLosing Peter Parker the second time was so much harder than the first.
Relationships: Happy Hogan & Peter Parker, Happy Hogan & Tony Stark, May Parker (Spider-Man) & Peter Parker, May Parker (Spider-Man) & Tony Stark, Michelle Jones & Ned Leeds & Peter Parker, Michelle Jones/Peter Parker, Peter Parker & Tony Stark
Series: Let Me Go [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1725967
Comments: 15
Kudos: 177





	The Knife of Never Letting Go

Five months after Spider-Man’s death, a memorial was built for him in Central Park.

Tony didn’t go to the unveiling. He should have, but he couldn’t.

“What did May think? ” He asked Happy after he came back to the Tower. After the compound had been destroyed, he had repurchased the building; unpacked all the boxes, turned on the lights, and tried to move on.

At least that’s what he told himself.

“You would know if you talked to her.”

Tony winced, but the slight wasn’t undeserved. Things had been strained between them since the kid's death, which was true of pretty much everyone these days. The only thing that had gotten better was Tony’s ability to push people away. He’d certainly done a good job of it with May Parker. He hadn’t talked to, much less seen her in months.

_God, you would be so disappointed in me, kid._

She had come to see Peter at a private facility when it was all over. Tony wasn’t sure who had called her, didn’t care. All he cared about was the kid. His kid, who he had lost again, and despite knowing that, Tony held him until Rhodey had to drag him away.

“Tony, come on, man, he’s gone. Let him go.”

It was the first time Tony ever punched him sober.

Because Peter couldn’t be gone.

Tony wasn’t ready for that.

He expected May to be angry, to scream and curse and cry and he almost wished she had. A furious reaction was better than the heartbroken one he got. “Thank you.” was all she said but the rest was implied. Thank you for being there. Thank you for loving him. Thank you for not letting him be alone. Tony didn’t deserve any of it.

“She wasn’t there.” Happy said now. “She’s in Berlin, staying with a friend.” He looked up after a moment, not at Tony but somewhere past him. “MJ and Ned were there, though.”

That was a more forceful punch to Tony's solar plexus than hearing May hadn’t been. He knew they had been at the facility with May, but he hadn’t seen them.

How do you tell a seventeen-year-old that their best friend is never coming home?

You don’t, so Tony didn’t.

_Because I’m a fucking coward._

He didn’t speak to them at the funeral a week later either. They were polite enough, smiling when people came forward and shook their hands, but when it was just the two of them standing by Peter’s grave, they let the facade slip. They were too young to have to do this, Tony thought. Sixteen was too young to have to bury someone you loved.

_Sixteen was too young for you to die._

“Tony,” Happy’s sharp reprimand forcefully pushed him back to reality. “You can’t keep living like this. You’re going to have to talk to someone eventually.”

“I don't have to do anything.” Tony snapped.

“Hey, don't get pissed at me. I’m just trying to help you.”

“Yeah, well, you’re not!”

Happy’s jaw clenched, his hands balling into fists. “You know what’s not helping Tony? This shit right here.” He stepped closer, so their faces were inches apart. “Peter died so that you could live so that we all could, and the way you’re acting is a disgrace to his memory.”

Tony’s mouth fell open. He didn’t know what to say.

What could he say when he knew Happy was right?

He couldn’t say anything. So he left.

\--------------

His feet took him to Queens.

Pop up memorials for Spider-Man had sprung up all over the world. He knew there was nowhere he could go where he wouldn’t see the kid suit spray-painted on a brick wall or plastered to a haphazard mess of cardboard on the sidewalk, but Queens was the worst. There weren’t only memorials for Spider-Man in Queens. There were memorials for Peter Parker too.

Midtown had one just outside the front doors. Peter hadn’t been the only face there in the last five years, but now his picture stood alone, covered in flowers and notes of farewell. Delmar’s bodega had a photo of him on their counter, proclaiming the number five the ‘Parker Special.’

_You were more important to them than you ever knew._

It was easy for Tony to be angry everywhere else. It was easy for him to hate that the rest of the world only mourned Spider-Man and couldn’t even begin to comprehend the loss of Peter Parker.

It wasn’t like that in Queens.

Eventually, he found himself on the street where the kid's apartment had been and he was halfway up the stairs before he remembered that even if he knocked on the door, no one would answer it. The realization was so startling it seemed to knock the breath from his lungs, forcing him to sit on the steps in front of the building and ward off the panic attack he knew was coming.

Tony had gone through the first three stages of grief pretty quickly. Anger lapsed into depression. Days of refusing to leave his room, holding the kid's Midtown sweatshirt close to his chest. Until the day he found out Steve was sending the stones back. He ran from his room and begged Bruce to send him instead. All he wanted was one more. One more hug, one more laugh, one more look. Just one more. He didn't think it was too much to ask. But Bruce had shaken his head, looking at him with so much pity Tony thought he would be sick, and Steve had left instead.

When he came back a weathered old man, Tony’s anger returned with him. “How is it fair?” he asked him. “How is it any kind of fucking fair that you get to go and get your happily ever after when my son is dead?”

Steve barely reacted to Tony’s rage, didn’t even flinch when the inventor pointed an accusing finger in his face and screamed till his blood boiled. “It isn’t about fair, Tony.” He said.

“Of course it's not when you’re the one who got to make the choice.” Tony scoffed.

“Peter made his choice too.”

In an instant, Tony’s fury fizzled out like water over a fire.

“Peter made his choice,” Steve repeated. “And he died a hero because of it. Using the stones to bring him back would take his choice away, and it would doom the people in that Peter’s timeline. You can’t tell me you would be ok being a part of that.”

_You’d never forgive me if I’d done what I wanted._

So he had stormed out of the room, just like he had today.

Anger.

Depression.

Bargaining.

Tony went through all of those stages quickly.

It was the acceptance that was hard because denial was always there, too, convincing him that if they had been able to bring Peter back once, surely they could do it again. They were the Avengers. They had done the impossible.

_You did the impossible._

“Hey.”

Happy stood on the steps where Tony sat. Tony didn’t remember when he got there. “How did you-?”

The bodyguard held up his phone and the FRIDAY app Tony had installed glared back at him.

“Traitor.” He muttered.

After a long moment, Happy sat down beside him and sighed. “I’m sorry, Tony. I had no right to- I’m just sorry.”

“You weren’t wrong, though,” Tony said. “It’s just- god, it’s so fucking hard. Everywhere I go, I see his face. I just really miss him.”

Happy’s lips pinched into a tight line. “Yeah, I miss him too. He was a pain in my ass, but I’m always gonna miss him.”

“You’re preaching to the choir Hap.” Tony ran his hands through his hair, tugging so hard he thought he might rip it out. It didn’t matter. The kid wasn’t there to turn it grey anymore. “God, if I could go back, there’s so much I would’ve-”

“Don’t.” Happy shook his head. “Don’t wish that. That wishes everything away, and there was too much good to want that.” A second later, he was laughing. “Do you remember when he first brought MJ to meet you and May, and he was so nervous that he ran into the wall?”

That startled a snort out of Tony. “Fuckin kid had a black eye for two days.”

Happy nodded. “Or when Fury was trying to recruit him for the team, and he hung up on him?”

“I was so proud of him for that.”

“Hmmm, I wonder where he learned it from.”

Tony felt fondness swell in his chest, and it was the first time in months that it didn’t hurt.

He would never be able to accept it, not entirely. The Peter Parker shaped hole he cut into his life made sure of that. But he would get better. He owed it to the kid to get better.

And he did.

A year passed.

He finally called May Parker, and when she came back to the states, they went out for coffee. They talked about her time in Berlin and his in New York, about Morgan and Pepper, and the new Avenger Initiative Fury was building. “He’ll never find anybody as good as you.” She said with a smirk.

Eventually, they were brave enough to talk about Peter and it wasn’t sad. It didn’t hurt when he looked at May’s face and saw dark eyes that were so much like the kids or when she reached across the table to take his hand and told him how much Peter had loved him. His smile took up his whole face when he told her about lab days and movie nights, about the kid’s overwhelming excitement and his brain that was almost as big as his heart.

He celebrated with Ned and MJ when they graduated and again when they went off to college.

MJ was going to Harvard, and Ned was going to MIT.

Tony knew how much it hurt Ned to pack up his things and move on without his best friend when not even two years ago - well, almost seven for Tony - he had thought they would be going together. Tony told him that he was welcome to a job at Stark Industries once he graduated, but he shook his head.

“It's one thing to go to college without him, but I can’t take his job.”

Tony nodded, clapping a hand on the kid’s shoulder. “The offer’s always open if you change your mind.”

He never did.

Instead, when he came to see Tony after graduation, it wasn’t for a job. It was for a favor. He wanted Tony to sponsor the video game company he was trying to kickstart: ParkerLeeds Gaming. Their first game was based on Spider-Man, with a dedication to Peter Parker at the end.

When it was released, they went out for drinks and toasted to Peter.

_You would be so proud of him, kid._

MJ met someone new. His name was Jackson.

She introduced him to Tony and May one night over dinner, and Tony could have sworn it was the kid. The boy walking into the restaurant had messy brown hair and a wide smile with a smart mouth to match Michelle’s, and Tony was instantly taken back to ten years ago when he thought it would be Peter telling him that he and Michelle were getting married. But, when he looked up, Tony saw his eyes were blue, not brown.

It wasn’t Peter, and he realized that was the exact reason Michelle had brought Jackson to meet them. She was asking him and May for permission. Permission to finally let their son go after all this time.

_You would have wanted her to be happy._

Two years after they got married, Michelle and Jackson had a son. His name was Parker, and as he grew up, Morgan grew up with him. Tony watched her go through high school and college and take her place with Harley Keener on the New Avengers team. She took over SI when Pepper retired, and he couldn’t have been more proud. And even as she outgrew fairytales, she always listened to every story Tony had to tell about Peter. Like so many others, her older brother was her biggest hero.

As Tony watched his daughter, he never forgot his son.

The weight of his absence would never be something Tony could get rid of.

Ten years passed, then twenty, and it was never gone, but it was easier to lift.

**Author's Note:**

> Happy ending coming soon!


End file.
